Lecturer Susan Haas (left) and lecturer Emile Bruneau (right) both taught at Annenberg.
Two Annenberg faculty members died in the past week.
Lecturer Susan Haas, who taught at Annenberg and the School of Social Policy and Practice, died of a heart attack on Sept. 25. Lecturer Emile Bruneau, who served as director of Annenberg’s Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab, died of brain cancer on Sept. 29.
“We are devastated by the loss of two of our scholars: Susan Haas and Emile Bruneau,” Annenberg tweeted on Thursday morning. “Our hearts are with their family and friends, and we will share with you more full information about their lives in the coming days.”
Haas’s death was unexpected, Annenberg Dean John Jackson wrote in an email to Haas’s former students. She is survived by two adult children.
“Susan was absolutely devoted to her students,” Jackson wrote. “She put her whole self into not only educating them but checking in on them as people and doing whatever she could to guide them on a path to their own fulfillment.”
This semester, Haas was teaching COMM 491: Communication Internship, which she has taught since 2014. She became Annenberg's Internship Coordinator in 2018 and manages the Annenberg in Washington internship program for Communication majors. Since 2012, Haas also taught regularly for the School of Social Policy and Practice.
Bruneau, who most recently taught COMM 311: Peace Communication in spring 2018 according to Penn Course Review, died after a two-year-long battle with brain cancer. His wife Stephanie Bruneau documented his journey since January 2019 on the health communications platform CaringBridge.
He is survived by his wife and his two young children Clara and Atticus.
“In these last few weeks of hospice, we have had a vision of Emile resting peacefully on a raft, floating farther and farther from our shore,” Stephanie Bruneau wrote. “This raft has been drifting in a sea of our collective love, shared memories, and well wishes. The raft has finally crossed the horizon line. He is still there, somewhere, but out of sight to us on shore.”
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